Sonasoft Corp., a leader in enterprise-class email archiving and eDiscovery tools, clarifies its role with the IRS and Sonasoft’s email archiving services. Sonasoft does not have IRS email. Sonasoft never had access to IRS email.

“We have a strong presence with the public sector as part of our customer base, which at one time included as a customer the IRS Counsel Division. …

“In regards to the IRS as one of Sonasoft’s customers, it is true that one Division within the IRS was Sonasoft’s customer from 2005 to 2011,” clarified Andy Khanna. “This Division was the IRS Counsel. The main branch of the IRS did not use Sonasoft’s software for its operations; only the IRS Counsel used our SonaExchange software, which is a Microsoft Exchange Server replication solution. This particular software allowed the IRS Counsel to replicate the email data by copying it to a remote server for disaster recovery and business continuity as a failover copy to take over if the main system failed. In the event that a client’s Microsoft Exchange Server went down, then end users could access the replicated data on the Microsoft Exchange Server quickly and efficiently. The IRS Counsel Division stopped using Sonasoft’s replication software in 2011.”

“To further clarify, no Division within IRS ever used Sonasoft’s email archiving software. Only a Division within the IRS used any Sonasoft product and that was our email replication software, not our archiving or backup software,” said Andy Khanna.

Phil Kerpen noted that this was a rather large oopsie for Sonasoft, considering its 2009 bragging:

There have been a number of curious reversals of late in the investigation of IRS targeting of the Obama administration’s political opponents, especially with the production of official records such as e-mail. This one should be fairly easy to resolve, at least in terms of the probe. The federal contract with Sonasoft and the payments made should be part of the public record, and the House Oversight Committee (or Ways and Means, which is performing a parallel probe) should be able to quickly determine whether Sonasoft is telling the truth about the contract scope and services rendered. Sonasoft’s credibility in its marketing will not be as easily remedied.

As for the rest, a consensus is building that this scandal requires an independent investigator who can operate outside the parameters of the Department of Justice and Congress. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s editorial board, a reliably liberal-progressive voice in the media, raised eyebrows yesterday by joining that consensus, calling for a special prosecutor after the IRS’ convenient claims of lost e-mails:

The old caution against ascribing to malice what can be explained by incompetence is worth keeping in mind when evaluating a high-profile blunder in either the private or public sector, such as the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

But the latest twist in the long-running controversy — the eye-rollingly convenient loss of IRS e-mails — moves the needle from ineptitude and toward the other, more troubling end of the spectrum. While the lost e-mails aren’t definitive proof of an orchestrated effort by the IRS or the Obama administration, the recent news that thousands of e-mails were obliterated in a computer hard-drive crash in 2011 is tough to swallow, not only for technology professionals, but also for an increasingly tech-savvy public.

The Strib’s editorial board were decidedly unimpressed with John Koskinen’s arrogant dismissal of questions from Republicans on the panel, as well as the answers that Koskinen did provide:

The IRS expects Americans to hold onto receipts and other documents for years. The agency’s lackadaisical data management suggests a higher bar for the public than agency officials. That the IRS dallied in telling Congress about the lost e-mails raises further questions about what happened. Lerner’s unwillingness to testify is also troubling. And there’s the timing of her hard-drive crash, which came 10 days after a Republican congressman sent a June 3, 2011,letter to the agency inquiring about audits of donors to the type of organization that had come under extra scrutiny.

It was frustrating watching congressional hearings last week. New IRS Commissioner John Koskinen blew off concerns about the missing e-mails. Republicans’ understandable frustration yielded little new information. Few if any had the technical expertise needed to really sort out what happened.

A special prosecutor could compel stronger cooperation from the IRS, consult technology experts and bring charges if necessary. Appointing one is a necessary and reasonable step to ensure that the American people learn the truth.

No one will get to the truth without subpoenas, testimony under oath, and the threat of perjury and obstruction charges. That won’t happen with this DoJ running interference for the IRS and the White House.

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No one will get to the truth without subpoenas, testimony under oath, and the threat of perjury and obstruction charges. That won’t happen with this DoJ running interference for the IRS and the White House.

Which means there’s one option left to the House Republicans if they’re serious about getting to the bottom of this. Arrest Lois Lerner!

Last week, however, Sonasoft backed away from its 2009 claims, and now says that the contract never included services that would have archived e-mail servers

Does the IRS say the same thing? There is most definitely a contract for work if there was one. And since the IRS hasn’t denied it up until now, or even said that there wasn’t a service being used is odd. It’s also funny how this comes out right after Issa asks for answers on this very topic. BS!

Obama’s book publisher was claiming his “born in Kenya” biography up until 2008 as well. I guess we don’t pay attention to what companies claim, particularly in ads? (I know I don’t, advertisements are about as truthful as Presidential speeches…)

I read elsewhere this morning that Sonasoft is saying that it wasn’t the entire IRS it was providing service too, just the IRS Counsel – DUH, isn’t this one of the very email server that one would need to see?

I’m sorry for sounding like a broken record but this is what happens when you lodge the lawmaking powers, law interpretation powers, and law enforcement powers into a single as a means of governing a vast nation of hundreds of millions of people. One or more of those branches will increase the amount of power it has and thus increase the power of the overall institution of national government. I’m pretty sure that Montesquieu never believed that a system of checks and balances would work for a nation this large. This scandal, as the many others, are sourced by the enforcement mechanism of the federal government, the executive branch. This comes as no surprise. Why on earth did the Federalists not see this? In my opinion, the creators of the Articles of Confederation were “spot on” when they created a national government that had no executive branch, no judicial branch, and a legislature that required the consensus of the states go govern. Of course, we have an out of control and ever expanding executive but then there is the issue of the federal judiciary. Not only is it slow to check the other branches, it has the power to make determinations about on who national law is to be followed. Wickard v. Filburn, Scott v. Sanford, and the ruling on the individual mandate come to mind. And let us not forget the legislature. Critics of the Constitution described its greatest flaw as the “silent” and “perplexing” operations that are not seen by the people. I just finished reading an article about Turbo Tax spending millions to kill tax reform. Fair Tax legislation comes to mind(R.I.P).

No one will get to the truth without subpoenas, testimony under oath, and the threat of perjury and obstruction charges. That won’t happen with this DoJ running interference for the IRS and the White House.

So….. you’re discounting the idea that seven key individuals all had computer crashes within days after the Congress started asking questions? Don’t these hard working civil servants deserve the benefit of the doubt? /

How is this a surprise? We knew this is exactly how this game would be played out. More lies, more coverup, put Lerner in a jail cell right next to Koskinen, start looking and arresting any lower level IRS minions who keep the game going until someone breaks. We will not get the truth from these bureaucrats until we break a few knee caps and fingers. We need a special prosecutor with military back up if Holder won’t do his job, and put Holder in a cell in the super max in CO. Reserve a cell for, O, Pelosi, Reid as well!

There is no question this is illegal corruption against the people of the United States.

The Obama Administration is using our government in a comprehensive scheme to hide this illegality from the American people. This includes our Department of Justice, the IRS and ultimately the White House.

Lerner and now Koskinen are smug because they know this. They know they will be protected by Eric Holder and Mr Obama.

The question is- how long do the American people let this go on? How long do they let an out of control president and his acolytes corrupt our republic and treat us with utter, complete and illegal disregard?

This has been symptomatic not only of Mr. Obama- but the entire Democrat Party. We should relegate that entire, anti-American, autocratic leaning, destructive party to the dustbin of history.

“To further clarify, no Division within IRS ever used Sonasoft’s email archiving software. Only a Division within the IRS used any Sonasoft product and that was our email replication software, not our archiving or backup software,” said Andy Khanna.

So, doesn’t email replication imply that the emails were replicated?

And don’t most people consider replicated data to be a backup of said data?

Let’s see those emails which were “replicated” using Sonasoft’s email replication software (but were supposedly not “archived” using Sonasoft’s email archiving software).

It sounds like Sonasoft is trying to say that the emails were replicated, but not archived or backed up. WTH do they mean by that?

Eric Witholder WILL be forced to appoint a special prosecutor. But since he gets to appoint it, he will appoint some crony who will take a dive and possibly make a brazen attempt to prosecute A REPUBLICAN.

But in any case, an appointment of a “special prosecutor” will give the LSM an excuse to bury the story again.

They must also impeach Holder. He is a criminal and should be in prison.

dogsoldier on June 30, 2014 at 8:14 AM

Unfortunately, Bo(eh)ner doesn’t have the sac (or its contents) necessary for the task at hand. After all, Lerner, Holder and company successfully silenced their common enemies to the point they don’t even pose a threat to him, much less the larger bipartisan Party-In-Government.

It looks like a memorandum was put out by Obozo in 2011 on records retention:

Presidential Memorandum — Managing Government Records

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

(b) Within 120 days of the date of this memorandum, each agency head shall submit a report to the Archivist and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that:

(i) describes the agency’s current plans for improving or maintaining its records management program, particularly with respect to managing electronic records, including email and social media, deploying cloud based services or storage solutions, and meeting other records challenges;

…

Sec. 3. Records Management Directive. (a) Within 120 days of the deadline for reports submitted pursuant to section 2(b) of this memorandum, the Director of OMB and the Archivist, in coordination with the Associate Attorney General, shall issue a Records Management Directive that directs agency heads to take specific steps to reform and improve records management policies and practices within their agency. The directive shall focus on:

(i) creating a Government wide records management framework that is more efficient and cost effective;

(ii) promoting records management policies and practices that enhance the capability of agencies to fulfill their statutory missions;

Was the report sent to the Archivist? That is the same year that the Sonasoft contract ended.

I don’t believe for one second that the IRS doesn’t have an IT department or some company that is able to recover their emails. They would be the only government agency NOT to be able to do it. If they didn’t have a policy in place, then they went against Jugears memorandum.

I don’t believe for one second that the IRS doesn’t have an IT department or some company that is able to recover their emails. They would be the only government agency NOT to be able to do it. If they didn’t have a policy in place, then they went against Jugears memorandum.

Patriot Vet on June 30, 2014 at 8:40 AM

The issue is not that the IRS didn’t have an IT department able to recover emails. It is that it has one that is willing to thoroughly thwart the recovery of said emails as part of its larger destruction of evidence protocols.

Two other members of Sonasoft’s board of directors – the members other than Andy Khanna – are both working hard to get Ro Khanna elected.

And then there’s Ro Khanna. Khanna has connections to Obama that go way back, to Obama’s first run for the Illinois state senate, when Khanna was at the University of Chicago as an undergrad. Will Burns, a Chicago Democratic political operative, recruited Khanna to walk precincts with Obama during the campaign, and Khanna was reportedly star-struck:

“He was probably the first politician I’d met,” Khanna continues. “My recollection is that he was an exceedingly decent, gracious person, and that there was a lot of buzz around him as the future mayor. At the time, people talked about Obama as the next Harold Washington—who was, to be clear, viewed with extreme reverence. They thought Obama could be the next black mayor of Chicago. That got me interested in politics.”

Bloomberg-BusinessWeek writer Joshua Green compares Khanna’s first encounter with Obama to Bill Clinton’s storied encounter with John F. Kennedy. (So you can see the direction Green’s political profile, which touts Khanna as “Silicon Valley’s Wannabe Obama,” is going.)

Khanna ran a doomed campaign for the House from Silicon Valley in 2004, tilting quixotically at entrenched Democrat Tom Lantos on an anti-Iraq War platform. That run garnered him connections among top Democrats, which, along with his early link to Obama, made him an obvious pick for a deputy assistant secretary job at Commerce when Obama took the White House.

Perhaps coincidentally, Khanna left the Department of Commerce in August 2011, the same month that the Sonasoft contract with the IRS expired. (And, just to clarify, there is no obvious evidence that Khanna had or has a direct connection with Sonasoft, or the IRS Tea Party-targeting policy.)

The issue is not that the IRS didn’t have an IT department able to recover emails. It is that it has one that is willing to thoroughly thwart the recovery of said emails as part of its larger destruction of evidence protocols.

In other words, “Who ordered the Code Red?”

Steve Eggleston on June 30, 2014 at 8:47 AM

I agree 100%. So, will Issa subpoena the IT guys responsible for the IRS system? That is the real question. Why hasn’t he done it yet?

I can handle the truth. Not so sure about anyone in gubment. Once you start pulling at that thread, more keeps coming out.

Let’s hope the Z Street civil suit gains traction quickly – the judge in that case (2nd Circuit) sounds like the kind of guy who will brook no BS from those liars. He can issue subpoenas which have teeth. Congress’ subpoenas are voluntary – enforcement done by DOJ. Court subpoenas are delivered/enforced by the Marshall’s Service, and the judge can compel them, on threat of jail, to serve/enforce them. This stuff needs to get in front of a judge with no delay!

The federal contract with Sonasoft and the payments made should be part of the public record, and the House Oversight Committee should be able to quickly determine whether Sonasoft is telling the truth about the contract scope and services rendered.

Yes, in theory, but unfortunately the hard drives storing all that data crashed and were “recycled” because the data was deemed unrecoverable.

The complexity of technologies, make it hard to talk about failure in terms of media sound bites.

Sure, Sonasoft should have been more specific in their ad about being used at IRS, but they did not need to for advertising. We were chosen by the IRS, to do some work, was all they were saying. I guess I don’t blame them.

But when law makers don’t know the difference between a computer hard drive and the server, and say they had a computer crash…well, what crashed matters. Where is the data we want to know about, on the server or on the computer hard drive?…It’s all in the details, and you can’t get a correct word out of anyone.

Where did Lois Lerner “archive” her mail, on her desktop or in her account? Could she read it from home, could she read it on a Blackberry? I am only hopefull that the people playing with destroying the evidence are as dumb as the media following it. Perhaps we will still find Lois Lerner’s emails yet.

No one will get to the truth without subpoenas, testimony under oath, and the threat of perjury and obstruction charges. That won’t happen with this DoJ running interference for the IRS and the White House.

I’m in a Federal agency and I have been involved in a politically driven internal catfight. One day I discovered that all my emails for the duration of that period – about 27 months – had disappeared. I put in a ticket with the IT service and they were astounded: past emails do get electronically lost sometimes, or a period from some point in the past to the present disappear, but none of our IT folks had even seen a “bite” taken out of an email history. They looked over all the agency servers and found four separate locations where my emails were backed up (in one case, the specialist didn’t know a particular server was copying agency emails until he stumbled on it while investigating my problem). In each case, the “bite” had been taken.

The IRS has, or had, the Lerner emails backed up in more than one location. The only way they disappear is through deliberate sabotage.

In my case, and unfortunately for my opponents, my attitude towards digital memory has always been that it’s not worth the paper it’s not printed on. So I had printed off evey email exchange on the contested subject and turned them over to the Inspector General.

I’m in a Federal agency and I have been involved in a politically driven internal catfight. One day I discovered that all my emails for the duration of that period – about 27 months – had disappeared. I put in a ticket with the IT service and they were astounded: past emails do get electronically lost sometimes, or a period from some point in the past to the present disappear, but none of our IT folks had even seen a “bite” taken out of an email history. They looked over all the agency servers and found four separate locations where my emails were backed up (in one case, the specialist didn’t know a particular server was copying agency emails until he stumbled on it while investigating my problem). In each case, the “bite” had been taken.

The IRS has, or had, the Lerner emails backed up in more than one location. The only way they disappear is through deliberate sabotage.

In my case, and unfortunately for my opponents, my attitude towards digital memory has always been that it’s not worth the paper it’s not printed on. So I had printed off evey email exchange on the contested subject and turned them over to the Inspector General.

Cricket624 on June 30, 2014 at 9:25 AM

Thanks for confirming that those with sufficient knowledge of the system can deliberately destroy specific e-mails even in their backup locations, even in locations the “standard” IT department doesn’t know exist.

Actually, if your organization is large enough, it certainly does. The issue here, however, is whose servers? The Counsel’s emails are all backed up, but not the office where Lerner worked (by this claim). And I am betting that there were no emails to the Counsel’s Office about this – just for plausible deniability.

put Lerner in a jail cellpublic stocks right next to Koskinen

Bakokitty on June 30, 2014 at 8:27 AM

FIFY

It sounds like Sonasoft is trying to say that the emails were replicated, but not archived or backed up. WTH do they mean by that?

ITguy on June 30, 2014 at 8:31 AM

“Replicated” could be on a temporary basis. When the emails get taken off the server (archived or downloaded to a local file), they get dumped from the “replication”. It’s a big difference in what you’re asking for between “replication” and “backup”.

They are lying through their asses. Any IT admin who has ever worked with Exchange or any other mail server can tell you this.

The White House is losing its touch: it took a whole two weeks to get Sonasoft to backoff, drink the Kool Aid, and get on board with the cover-up. Probably a few immunities against prosecution were in the pot, should we ever bother to get past the Palace Guard.

Which means there’s one option left to the House Republicans if they’re serious about getting to the bottom of this. Arrest Lois Lerner!

Doughboy on June 30, 2014 at 8:05 AM

What makes you think that the House Republicans want to get to the bottom of this any more than Barky and Lois do? Boehner’s biggest problem is to give the illusion that he’s doing something, while making sure that he doesn’t accidentally stumble onto one of the many landmines that are now strewn around.

And Sonasoft – other than the reputation-hit for his business, Khanna probably not enjoying the glare of daylight being shined on the political aspirations of the “other” Khanna, the one that might or might not be related to him.

And Sonasoft – other than the reputation-hit for his business, Khanna probably not enjoying the glare of daylight being shined on the political aspirations of the “other” Khanna, the one that might or might not be related to him.

bofh on June 30, 2014 at 9:49 AM

I don’t know if it has been linked already but here goes from our friend J.E. Dyer:

That said, it is absolutely classic that investigating the Sonasoft tip turned up an Obama crony connection anyway. There’s one under every rock.

And the next step from all these “convenient” crashes that result in all these “convenient” diversions from who targeted the individuals or organizations or those who “conveniently” did not archive anything after all will “conveniently” have to take long enough the sort through so that, “conveniently”, we can only conclude that, “Dude, this is ____ years old”.

I’m curious concerning right now. Sonasoft was then, what’s going on currently? IF, by law all these emails are to be archived and once the IRS knew that Sonasoft isn’t archiving, whose responsible for that NOW? Are emails right now being archived, and by whom? What is the protocol now and were any changes made because of this scenario?

I’m trying to stand back and observe because one thing we have learned with this administration is, when the right hand is jerking, what’s the left hand doing?

Let’s hope the Z Street civil suit gains traction quickly – the judge in that case (2nd Circuit) sounds like the kind of guy who will brook no BS from those liars. He can issue subpoenas which have teeth. …

Koskinen said, under oath, that Sonasoft backed up IRS counsel emails…
Was he lying?

[mjbrooks3 on June 30, 2014 at 10:12 AM]

From the simple statement, it sounds to me like Sonosoft’s statement is based on Sonosoft’s jargon and the jargon differentiates between providing email backup, providing email archiving, and providing replication, with the latter being a something of a back up of an email backup and archiving of that backup. So it’s nothing more than making a copy of a copy and storing it and it may be somewhat irrelevant that it was email as it could be about anything.

As such, Koskinen is right about it being an email related backup and Sonosoft is right that they were neither responsible for collecting and archiving email for 90,000 IRS employees nor just the Counsel Division as that was someone else’s job; Sonosoft only made a copy of Counsels after it was done.

It’s possible that Sonosoft merely gave the IRS some software and in house IT did the copying of the copy.

There is most definitely a contract for work if there was one. And since the IRS hasn’t denied it up until now, or even said that there wasn’t a service being used is odd. It’s also funny how this comes out right after Issa asks for answers on this very topic. BS!

Patriot Vet on June 30, 2014 at 8:10 AM

Exactly. Unless that’s “lost” too. And anyone care to bet, that that’s gone missing as well? And IIRC, the owners of Sonasoft are big Obama supporters. Little help there!

Congress should demand a Special Prosecutor, and request by name Hizhonor Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He’s got the (chops) do do it fair and square, right down to the bottom of the cesspit.